Originally posted on Mazingira Centre:
An animal trial in the animal respiration chamber at ILRI’s Mazingira Centre (photo credit: ILRI/ Svenja Marquardt). Livestock production generates significant amounts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, accounting for about 65% of the total emissions from agriculture globally. Of these emissions, 40% are generated through enteric fermentation, the digestive processes…
Category Archives: Animal Feeding
#ThrowbackThursday video—sweetpotato recipe for silage success
Check out these English and Swahili instructional films on how to prepare and store silage made of sweetpotato vines for a cheap, nutritious and long-lasting feed for your dairy cows. Continue reading
Linking research-for-development and community needs in the climate-smart livestock systems project
This blog was written by Lucy Njuguna, a Graduate Fellow with the Sustainable Livestock Systems Program. In development work, there is often concern that external interventions can impose unintended costs on communities, especially when there is little or no consultation with the communities on their interests and priorities. This concern is particularly important in research … Continue reading
New program to enhance climate-smart livestock systems launched in Uganda
Uganda’s agricultural sector contributes significantly to both incomes and direct availability of food in the country. It is also a major contributor to economic growth through provision of raw materials for agro-industries, job opportunities and foreign exchange. Agriculture contributes to about 21% of Uganda’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Livestock production is an important subsector of … Continue reading
Better smallholder dairying for better incomes and climate resilience by and for the poor
The smallholder dairy sector offers a wide range of opportunities for enhancing the resilience of small-scale livestock-keeping populations while also increasing their efficiency and productivity and mitigating the greenhouse gas emissions from livestock that help cause global warming. Continue reading
Application of scaling frameworks to grazing exclosures in Ethiopia
This poster, produced for the Tropentag 2016 conference, explains how two scaling frameworks were used to identify knowledge gaps and learning opportunities in exclosure management and policy solutions to draw attention to possible ‘blind-spots’ and ‘win-win’ solutions that may affect the widespread success of exclosures in Ethiopia and elsewhere. Continue reading
Healthy animals, healthy returns: Improving pastoralists’ livelihoods in Kenya
Improving the value of livestock and its productivity through better animal disease surveillance and improved healthcare for animals is one of the key goals of the Feed the Future Kenya Accelerated Value Chain Development (AVCD) program. Continue reading
Meat and milk production scenarios and the associated land footprint in Kenya
Increasing demands for meat and milk in developing countries and the associated production growth are driving the expansion of agriculture at the expense of environmental conservation and other land uses. While considerable attention has been directed at improving crop yields to alleviate the pressure on land, there has been far less attention on the implications … Continue reading
Thirsty food story: grasping the invisible ingredient
Every food item we eat needs water for its production, but different foods require different amount of water. What do you think consumes more water: a steak, a glass of milk, a piece of bread or a cucumber? The short answer to this question is that the steak is the biggest water consumer. However, this … Continue reading
Climate resilient livelihoods in the ASALs: Kenya project to develop knowledge base for enhanced climate change adaptation
Since 2013, the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) has been partnering with the SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and the Kenya Livestock Marketing Council (KLMC) to implement an EU-funded project under the Kenya Rural Development Program (KRDP). The project on ‘Enhanced community resilience to drought through innovative market based systems approaches’ responds to concerns over the … Continue reading